Jessica Muroff, the new president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, arrives with great skills and a quest for big challenges. After six years transforming United Way Suncoast into a data-powered force for community impact, she’s bringing her energy, vision and collaborative spirit to her new role. She’s already worked closely with the Foundation on disaster recovery and nonprofit capacity building and now, she’s taking the lead in a full-time capacity. We recently caught up with Muroff to chat about her approach to philanthropy, her leadership style and her passion for outdoor adventures.

You've enjoyed a very successful career in philanthropy and you've spent over six years leading one of the largest United Ways in Florida. What motivated you to make the move at this time and how do you see that previous experience guiding you in your new role?  JESSICA MUROFF It was such an honor and privilege to lead United Way Sun Coast through some pretty challenging times—from COVID to multiple hurricanes. It was also an honor to work with our team—the way that we showed up every day for our community and all of the wonderful things that happened during those times. When this opportunity came with the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, I did spend significant time in reflection. It wasn't really something that I was actively seeking but what drew me in was the alignment of the mission, the opportunity for growth, the community that is the Sarasota region and all of the potential and opportunity there, especially with the Foundation’s community presence, its philanthropic innovation and its impact. As a leader, all of that really drew me in. When I met with the Board, it just seemed like a very natural next step to grow in my career and in my impact in the world of philanthropy.

As you step into your new role, what do you see as your biggest priorities? That is something that I will be working with the Board and the team on and I’ll really be doing a lot of listening coming in. The organization is in a strong place and has done a lot of great work across the region so it’s really about taking what is already an incredible organization and helping it to grow and do even more. I do see that there is a lot of opportunity for collaboration across the region. I also see opportunities for strengthening, evolving and aligning strategy with the team. There's even more work that I would love to do around data—how do we use the data that we have to drive change in the community and expand partnerships? How can we use it to understand the ways in which the region wants us to provide leadership and how we can really step into that role? I plan on doing a lot of listening in the community to build trust and relationships, strengthening the strategy, awareness and collaboration across the region. 

What does building trust and relationships look like in practical terms for you?  If you know me as a leader, one of my core values is being present—being very thoughtful about where I am showing up in community and being actually physically present. So whether that's with my team, my Board, our donors, community leaders or our nonprofit partners—when it comes to building trust and relationships, it's your presence initially and then it's really about some deep listening and taking input, feedback, learning about dreams, goals and really understanding the the dynamics of the region and the individual communities and creating actionable ways that we can respond to all of that input. Building trust and relationships is about actively listening and demonstrating how you're actively listening but the most important part is following through. That is something that's really core to my leadership. When I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it and I'm going to show you that I'm going to do it because that repeated behavior is what really builds that trust and faith. 

What are the most pressing needs right now in Sarasota, Manatee and surrounding areas and how do you think the Foundation can play a role in addressing them? The Sarasota region is blessed with incredible assets—natural beauty, a strong nonprofit ecosystem and an incredibly generous base of philanthropists and donors—but there's also a lot of complexity that comes with all of this. With growing disparity across the region and rising costs of living, we see stress on housing affordability, workforce systems and education. The rise of absenteeism across the state in education with our children has become a chronic issue in every county across the state and this is something that we need to address. The region has also been hit in multiple years with disastrous hurricanes. How can the Foundation show up to be that convenor and leader to help provide resources and solutions to tackle these issues? It requires systems thinking. This isn’t something we can simply grant money to—it isn’t going to fix the problem. We have to come together as funders and as a community. There has to be interconnectedness and some systems thinking on this issue, not just with funders but also with our local leaders. How do we come together to prioritize and address these issues?

I'm a very data-driven person, but you’ve got to go beyond the data and understand the qualitative side too, because the quantitative data will tell you one part of the story and the qualitative data—really listening to lived experience—will tell you why it’s happening and how you can truly move the needle. I think there is room in tackling these issues for experimenting and learning alongside our nonprofit partners and other partners, while also holding ourselves accountable to measurable outcomes. There is an opportunity to look at some ways we've been doing things and try something new to see if we can move the needle in some way. I do believe the Foundation is a very strong bridge between the community, philanthropy, business, government and individual donors, and it serves as a strong leader and convenor. When you harness that collective will and action, that’s when real change can occur.

You've navigated the United Way through the pandemic and multiple hurricanes. What do you think those experiences taught you about resilience, both for your staff and for yourself? So much. One thing I learned is that you can never be overprepared. You need to have a solid plan in place and rehearse it. We really saw a shift during COVID in the collaboration between nonprofits and funders across the sector. We had to do that—there was no other way and we have not veered from that discipline. We've seen it time and again in responding to natural disasters—we are much more successful when we work together. I have learned just how resilient and generous our region is. It constantly delights me to see how people step up and answer the call every single time. For me, this is not about when it happens next, but about making sure we have a plan in place, it’s rehearsed and we know what to do. We’ve affirmed those relationships, we know each of our roles and we know how we will work together to respond and serve our community, leveraging the systems, initiatives and impact we have at the Foundation to help our community bounce back from hardship. 

Beyond your professional life, you're known as an adventure seeker—tackling marathons, mountain hikes and other competitive events. How do these personal challenges influence your professional approach to work? I really love my career. I love what I do and I work hard and so being able to have these goals and these challenges outside of my professional career is very fulfilling to me personally. Every single time I do something that's a little bit more difficult, I teach myself that I am able to accomplish things that are beyond what I thought my limitations were. That kind of boundary pushing builds my resiliency because it takes deep mindfulness and being in the moment in order to push yourself through physically, completely exhausting, crazy, arduous challenges. I believe it makes me a more resilient, patient and mindful leader who can push through really difficult things.

Is there an outcome that you've been most proud of in your philanthropic career? There are so many, it’s hard to choose just one, but I believe that innovation is critical, and our sector must embrace technology to avoid falling behind. To address this, I led my team at United Way Suncoast in developing a platform called "Go United." This platform is designed to revolutionize our community relationships through a personalized, 24/7 digital experience. Users who log in and create an account with United Way can access their complete relationship with United Way, including annual and lifetime giving and volunteering data, their personalized social return on investment, relevant community conditions and impact stories—all in one location. This digital connection provides real-time access to personal and community information, showing users how they can make a difference. It connects donors and volunteers with the United Way work in a more personal and transparent way. We have successfully built and launched "Go United" and there are significant plans to sell this platform to other United Ways.

You've collaborated as a partner of the Community Foundation over the past few years on a variety of issues. How do you see that experience as helping you in your new role?  From a relationship perspective, the Community Foundation has been an incredible partner, whether it's utilizing 211 to help distribute Season of Sharing dollars, using ALICE data to highlight the need across our region and where it's concentrated in specific zip codes to really help those living paycheck to paycheck and understanding how we can help prevent them from falling off the edge because so many people are living on the edge. It's these relationships and these partnerships where we've shared data, where we have collaborated on either disaster response or other issues—those relationships remain and I'm really proud of that. Sharing, collaboration and data only helps to make us all stronger. All of that helps me to step into this role with some really great relationships and some great perspective because at United Way, I’m both a funder and someone who provides services in a community and I’ve also led other nonprofits, so bringing that perspective to the foundation is also really important.

What are you most excited about in this next chapter? Number one—the Sarasota region and community is incredible. Right now, I'm juggling a few regions so really being able to focus in on this region is something I’m looking forward to. At United Way I'm very focused in three specific areas, but at the Foundation it will be much broader than that. Having that broader platform by which to work with donors and our community to create change is really exciting for me. This Board and this team is ready to keep growing, innovating and pushing forward on meaningful change in our community and I am thrilled to be able to be a part of that and lead the team through those types of efforts. I love thinking about the future and strengthening organizations. I am not someone who comes in like a bull in a china shop, where everything's broken and we need to fix it—absolutely not. I'm a very thoughtful leader and I’m coming in to understand the organization, its people and our community and taking what that foundation is and growing it, strengthening it and evolving it based on the dynamics of our community, what we need and how we can do that together.